prairie dogs

        By noon they were blushingly drunk, glowing with friendship. Tannhauser boasted of his beer. "It's a real elk-stopper. Can't control the alcohol. But what the hell? Eh, Leah?"
        "Um. What?"
        Artie stood up, scooting his chair, and began massaging her shoulders. Warm butter.
         "Hey, Dutch, you gotta bed for my gal? She's done in."
         "Sure thing."
         Tannhauser freshened his own bed and Artie carried Leah to it. She was out before her head hit the pillow.
          "What say we head on down to my brudder's gas station and get what you need while she sleeps it off? Today I ship my gute bier to him."
          "Sounds good. You're a real sport, Dutch."
          "Jah. Jah. Hah hah hah!"
          They shambled outside. The sunshine was fierce.
          Tannhauser inserted the key and worried the ignition, giving good choke. The truck roared to life.
          Artie noticed a rifle in the gun rack. "Whatchacallit this thing?"
           "Ach! That's my prairie dog fire stick. Hah hah hah!"
           Artie admired the Cooper varmint killer. Without handling it.
           "Jah," Tannhauser said, squinting. "I gots the Ruger .204 round in it. Plugs them gute."
           He opened a gunnysack and offered Artie a warm Beck's
           "Jesus Christ, Dutch. I'm glad we're in open country."
           "Hah hah hah!"


                                                                                   *

           Dry as a cinder, the prairie protested the truck's passage. A rooster tail of volcanic ash plumed behind Tannhauser's bomb.
            "How far?" Artie asked after thirty miles.
            "About one more round of beer."
            "You are one helluva trip, Dutch."
            Finally, up ahead, a speck beneath an enormous sky. Cobalt blue thunderheads. No guarantee of rain.
            "Dat's it, Artie. My brudder's gas station."
            They rolled up to a fieldstone house a tin-roofed portico. The antique gas pump had glass walls. Artie felt so relieved he felt like pissing.
            "Heinrich's Last Chance!" Tannhauser announced. "Sells my gute bier COLD! Best cheap gas anywhere!"
            It was a tavern in the wilderness.
            Artie wondered where it got electricity.
            "How does he keep anything cold? I don't see any power lines."
            "Jah, hah hah hah. He's got der Tesla."



                                                                                *


         The oaken bar was dark with oil, a monument to stand-up drinking. A brass foot-rail was all a man needed. Artie marvelled at the room. Oak panelling, old as the hills. Bullet holes in a poster of Teddy Roosevelt.
         One poster, pristine behind glass. Thule~Gesellschaft 1*9*1*9.
         Artie heard bootheels behind him. He turned to find he was standing to face to face with a Teutonic Knight named Heinrich Geist.  Tannhauser's elder brother and complete opposite. At least seventy.
         "And who is your friend, Little Brother?"  Like Tannhauser, his accent resembled Lawrence Welk. Crystal blue eyes. Wire-rim glasses. Skull-face carved from hickory. A Westerner, tall and lean, denim and leather.
         "My name is Artie Hoffman. I would like to buy gasoline."
         "Ah. New York!"


                                                                        *

          Artie paid in wrinkled money. Then he looked around the bar room. Many things were tacked to and hung on the walls. There was a photograph of a group of  intellectuals in suits. One astoundingly beautiful woman sat among them, wearing a cloche hat. There was something familiar about her face.
          "My mother," Heinrich chimed proudly. "And those are members of the Vril Society."
     

oasis

        Artie pushed the Indian and Leah walked along, straightening herself. A tortoise shell hairbrush magically appeared in her hand, commencing an age-old womanly ritual. One hundred strokes. They found themselves in a fairybook meadow. A cistern, a pig pen, a log pile, and an ancient American-International pickup truck stood in the yard. A scene worthy of John Curry. Artie smiled, noticing two large gas cans in the back of the truck.
         Leah approached the front door, which was open.
         "Hello?" Her voice like a cowbell. "Hello?"
         A scent of barley and yeast touched her nose.
         "Guten Morgen. Guten Tag," came a man's reply. "Kommen sie herein! Bitte."
         A sturdy man of maybe sixty years emerged. Faded blue bib overalls, faded blue chambray workshirt, scuffed brown lace-up boots with thick tartan laces. Bright blue eyes. White bushy brows and beard. Clean of moustache, reminding Leah of Quaker and Mormon men from long ago.
         Softly from a radio: "Tannhauser."
         Leah shook his hand. "Good morning to you, sir."
         Artie came in. "This is my wife Leah. We are travellers."
         "Sit down. Here." Tannhauser motioned toward a dinner table and three chairs. Blue checkerboard oil cloth and a vase of lilac.
          Without asking, the Old World gentleman went to a reserved larder and brought forth three amber bottles of warm home-brewed beer.
           It was only nine in the morning.


                                                                                      
        


       

on the road again

        The blood orange sun awoke, stretching and yawning. It caressed rosy cirrus clouds as they floated over eastern Oregon. Artie was cleaning the Indian. Rubbing it as if it were a woman. Leah loved that.
        "The house sold well," she said. "I was surprised."
        "Me too. Not much equity, but we'll be fine. After all, we ARE gypsies!"
        "Nomads!"
        "Nomads!"
        "You don't mind going back to Utah?"
        "Not in the least. Dipshit is dead."
        "Settled, then." Leah amazed Artie with an impromptu cartwheel.


                                                                                   *


          A line storm swept up from the prairie and shook the timberland. Artie was running on empty. He never worried Leah about such matters. Civilization had ebbed for miles. It was a dirt road now. Leah was not an idiot. She was sure he was lost. Red cedar and white pine obscured their path, boughs plunging and soaring. Hillsides were brown and loamy with Threebear topsoil..
          "Stop! Stop right now," she shouted into his ear.
          "What?"
          "It's getting worse and we need to talk!"
          He pulled beside a pine and quickly hoisted a tarp. Lightning struck a nearby tree. Leah screamed.
           "Easy, Darling. We'll be fine." He hugged her and set her down.
           "We're out of gas, aren't we?"
           "'Fraid so."


                                                                                       *


            In the morning the world smiled. Leah walked into the woods to make her toilet. From the loamy soil rose shoots of Ute Ladies Tresses. Rare now, except in deep country.
             Her anxiety suddenly evaporated.
             Something told her they would be all right.
             Artie did his business too.
             When they were mounted up he kick-started the Indian and they found an improved trail.
             Soon the woods cleared and there was a pasture and a log cabin covered in wild lilac.
             "Oh, Heavenly Father," Leah sighed. "Thank you for that last drop of gas."
            

spirit unbound

        As the roots of the great sugar pine probed the brain in Hyram Pratt's severed head he was thinking: I need not stay here. Between lofty branches he observed the phases of the moon and the circuit of stars around Polaris.
         It is time.
        A dust devil tickled his ribs and lifted him from the earth.
        His lucid shadow traversed the face of the moon.


                                                                                     *


        Leah shivered. Someone had walked across her grave.
        The hoot owl summoned his woodland mate.
        In the bedroll beside her Artie argued Talmud in his sleep. His slumber was an enormous beard. Hassidic, black. Profound.
        She kissed his bald spot. My special Jew.
        Morning dew collected on the Indian.
        "What time is it?" He asked, rubbing his eyes.
        "Oh, Darling. We have all the time in the world."

scoop drops in

        Sight of the Skell Van misted Artie's eyes. He pressed his hand upon the radiator.
        Hello, old friend.
        So, all he had to do was climb the steps and knock on the door. A frog materialized in his throat. Much had transpired since they parted ways. Ziggy was now a charismatic motivational speaker who looked like Jesus. A soapbox minister in no need of a Crystal Cathedral. His cathedral was the great outdoors. Folks had testified to his healing powers.
         First Artie would hug his old friend and then Scoop would get the story. The Pentax was loaded and ready to shoot.
         From above: "Hey, asshole! Get away from there!"
         Sonya Chekov. On her balcony, feeding Mugsy.
         "Hey, Pretty Thing. It's me, Artie Hoffman."
         "Scoop! Sorry. Didn't recognize you."
         "Yeah, yeah. Mind if I come up?"
         "Suit yourself. I'm not home."


                                                                              *

         Years of celibacy had not been a requirement from God. Brother Ambrose felt so close to Cherry Blossom that he needed nothing more. Bonded forever.
         He put a lot of dirt on that old van. Travelling many miles. In Eugene he hooked up with a widow woman named Summer Rain, fifty years old, living in an Airstream trailerpark. Lattice arbor and canvas carport. Winter garden in back.
          "What a lovely mural," she said as he parked the Skell Van close beside her trailer.
          "My late wife painted it." He smiled without knowing it.
          Summer Rain was large and round. Shaped like the Venus of Willendorf.
          She wore black teeshirts and black denim overalls.
          "Are you in mourning?" he asked her.
          "Naw. These are my skinny clothes."
          They laughed and she served him iced tea. Two folding deck chairs. A card table.
          "You are welcome to anything I have," she said.
          "Thank you kindly."
          She visited his van and smoked weed. He shared his TM mantra and they meditated together. He shared her bathroom and kitchen. Pretty soon they were showering together. Saving water.
          One afternoon as hawks cried in the sky he told her he would be moving on.
          Her enormous tears broke his heart.


                                                                               *


         Now he was lounging in Sonya's apartment. Her wallposter of Bjork scrutinized him.
         A Sugarcubes CD played while he waited.
         Resting upon a window sill, where most people would put a pot of philadendron, was a feminine alabaster jar with nothing in it. Her Mary Magdalene.
         Knock knock.
         He looked up and saw Artie Hoffman, grinning like a thief.
         "Hello, Kemo Sabe."

        

a door to everything

         The doorway framed her like the one that framed John Wayne in "The Searchers." Lilacs were blooming in the dooryard. Cherry Blossom wore her mauve gingham grannydress. A string of cowry shells overlapped a string of lapis lazuli stones around her Audrey Hepburn throat. Her silhouette accented the arch of her slim hips. Brother Ambrose crooked his finger in bidding and she strode forth, into the owl light. 

         He was adept at this. Accomplishing what a million widowed men desired. A golden necromancy, available only to soul mates. 

         "How have you been, darling?" he asked, offering her a mug of chai.
         She smiled lovingly. "The same as you."


                                                                                 *


          A gossimer touch, his finger rested upon the wound in her breast. Bloodlessly he found her dead heart.
          "How does that feel?"
          "Sweet as one of your kisses."
        
           Oh, this was beyond belief!

           Night had fallen beyond the door. A whipoorwill called to them.
           By then they were making profound love.
           In the cabin deep in Oregon so long ago.





                                                                                   

sweet creek falls

         It was  remote viewing. Maxine lay heavily upon the bedsheet, her wide hips writhing like an engorged serpent. She had been invaded. Brother Ambrose could not look away. For he was drawn to her anguish like a moth to a flame.
        His viewing technique was self-developed. He  practiced Transcendental Meditation  and was initiated in Sidhi-TM. Though he meditated quite succussfully inside the comforts of his van, nevertheless,  he sought out meditation centers. The energy shared within a group was mind boggling. Sidhi-TM eventually led him to "flying" groups.
         A TM friend introduced him to the Monroe Institute and astral travel.
         Double whammy.
        


                                                                           *


         Scoop drove over to the Totem Pole Lodge and parked behind Sonya's apartment. The next door apartment had an old van up on blocks. The Skell Van.
         "Well, I'll be damned!"


                                                                           *


           Ziggy lost his mind soon after splitting from Artie and Leah. Cherry Blossom was gone forever.
           He drove as far as Sweet Creek Falls.
           By then he was raving mad.
           Leah had told him what had happened. She described the obscene mortuary rites. The vision of Ernst Mueller bathing Cherry Blossom's poor dead body with rosewater was too much. Simply too much. 
          He found himself wading into deep water. The falls were crashing above. He was screaming.
          "Cherry! Cherry, my love!"
          People gathered around. A preacher from the God Fearers baptised him.
          Full emersion.


                                                                          *


            Each ensuing year he made holy pilgrmage to Sweet Creek Falls.
            Driving the Skell Van.


                                                                   



                                                       
         



        

a past revealed

        A tiny brass bell tinkled overhead as Artie Hoffman opened the door. The bookshop appeared diserted. Taped music piped something from "Hearts of Space."
        "Hello to Camp! Emrys!"
        He peered around a folding lattice wood screen. Nobody. A box of books shipped from Magikal Childe lay unopened, Most odd. Usually Emrys Lloyd would stop everything, even taking a crap, when ever a parcel arrived. A draught of dry August air touched his face and he noticed that the backdoor had flown open. He could see the porch and he could smell the reefer.
        "Hey you old stoner! Answer up."
        "Hi, Scoop."
        The bookseller resembled Gandalf. He wore a cloak and his beard was long. Blue eyes twinkled beneath a floppy wizard's cap. He did not wash often, but frequently doused himself with Old Spice. A fragrence decidedly California Red permiated the area.
         "I'm surprised you aren't unpacking the new books."
         "Yeah well, today's different."
         "Oh?"
         "Fucking Brother Ambrose."
         "What'd he do?"
         "Took off with my girl."
         "Which girl?"
         "Sonya."
         "Where'd he take her?"
         "Away from me. The shit-heel."
         "Hard words. But you don't look THAT broke up about it."
         "Great fucking grass, dude."


                                                                                 *


        Brother Ambrose was doing something he had not done since he and a woman named Cherry Blossom swam naked in Otter Creek. Sonya Chekov rose from the cold water pond and marched ashore. Brother Ambrose met her with his patented erection. He grasped both buttocks and squeezed hard. She gasped, grinned wantonly and took him in hand.
         "Tell me more," she commanded.
         "I was married once, long ago, down in Oregon. We were hippies living on the land."
         "Easy-going, I'll bet."
         "Very easy," he replied, bringing her to earth.


       
       
       

shiitake and cilentro

          "Why don't you use my sofa rest of the night?" Hank suggested. "I'll stay in here."
          "And drink more beer," she teased.
          "Might just DO that. Might just DO that." Wilfred Brimley.
          "Love ya, Dozer."
          She stood to leave. He observed her with fondness in his watering eyes. Recklessly he confessed: "I've always thought you looked like Adriene Barbeaux. Have I ever told you that?"
          "Not to my face." She chuckled. "To my chest, maybe."
          Impishly she skipped from the nook.
          Hank shook his head. "Busted again."


                                                                                  *


        Maxine awoke with a pain in her kidneys, having slept on her back without changing positions. As expected, Hank was gone. This time he had remembered to take his cell. She called him just to say thanks for everything.
         "H'llo, what's up?"
         "Don't eat while you're out. I'm fixing one of your favorites."
         "Ten-four."
         Shiitake and cilentro. He could taste it already.
         Maxine again: "Dear, would it put you out too much to stop by the Asian Market?"
         "Not at all."
         "Some Lop Chang pork sausage. Oops! There goes my surprise."


                                                                             *


         A two-rut road climbed like Jacob's Ladder from the wilderness onto a stretch of hardpan and there was a bend. Shafts of golden sunlight, with green motes swimming within like plankton, fell between braces of Douglas fir. Hank put a cassette in the tape deck.
         Siegfried's Rhine Journey.
         Indeed. There were giants in the earth.
     

aftermath

        Thinking "a bun in the oven," Maxine held her father's Torah with trembling hands. Hank patiently awaited her words as she tried to marshal her thoughts. He had not seen Nathan Silver's holy book in years. Evidently something frightened her back to the Old Religion. They were sitting in the sunrise nook as moonlight flooded the sideboard. A tallow candle burned evenly within a Mexican glass devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Some of his bric-a-brac.
        "What gives?" He finally asked.
        "Trying to find the passage about Nephalim."
        "Genesis Six."
        "Thanks." She found her page.
        "Giants in the earth and all that jazz."
        "I'm serious, Dozer."
        "Sorry. That old chestnut tickles me. Aliens and Angles, UFOs and the Bible. Just a lot of monkeys throwing their shit in the air."
        "Hush."
        "So many conflicting translations. Did the original text say sons of gods or sons of God? "
        "I said hush."
        "Lusty noble lads hankering for the fair daughters of men. Peeping at then while they bathed. The wankers."
         Maxine sighed, put down the book, and took his hand. "When you woke me that was all I could think. I had been raped by a supernatural being."
         "Leda and the Swan. Yeats. You were reading Yeats at bedtime."
         "Christ! You are impossible. I"m telling you I did NOT dishevel myself!"
         Hank reached into the fridge for an Anchor Steam beer. He said, "Babe, you're all I have."

demon lover

        Ex calibur. From white steel of a Sarmatian smithee in Kalybes a blade. Across the steppes rode warriors who worshipped a sword stuck in stone.


        Maxine's work in progress. Her opus progresso. She smiled and gazed out the leaded glass panes of her sunrise nook. Rosey shafts probed the mist upon a high lawn overlooking Queen Charlotte Strait. She could almost imagine the Lady of the Lake rising from the mystical waters of British Columbia.
        A wreath of steam wafted from her mug of Lipton's Green Label. Robins' egg blue, from a kiln in Victoria, this mug was her favorite vessel.
        Hank had driven off somewhere. His cell phone rested in its charger. Each day his short-term memory surrendered to occulsion. Long-term memory was another case. He recalled the essence of gardenia. Said she wore the scent on their honeymoon.
         "Why your interest in all things Arthurian?" he had asked before going out.
         "I guess it began with Brother Ambrose."
         "Eh?"
         "He seems to have picked up where Pelagius left off. You remember that movie we went to, where Arthur was half Roman and half Pict or something?'
          "Vaguely. Hollywood mumbo jumbo."
          "Perhaps. But Brother Ambrose sounds a lot like the movie's King Arthur."
          "Cribbing from movies. Pathetic. I don't know why you listen to him."
          "New Age sermons on the green. Very romantic."
          "Fish guts and scales."


                                                                                   *


         That evening a nightmare pressed upon her and she perspired like a rutting horse. Soaking the pillow and sheets. A loathesome paralyses spread through her, possessing her, and she felt penetrated. She woke to find someone in bed with her, someone other than Hank. Her waterworks moved like riptides. Amorphous, yet solid enough to conquer her body, "he" aroused her, her hips rising to meet "his" thrusts. A lifelong trust in Freud left her abandoned, unprotected.
          As the etheric body made love to her she was certain  that an umbilical cord, glistening and transparent, coiled upwards into the breathing darkness.
          I have gone stark fucking crazy!


                                                                                   *


          She opened her eyes and saw Hank standing at the foot of her bed, his waxen head glowing with a dim halo from the ceiling lamp. He was holding the Cutty Sark model, his mouth agape.
           "Maxie, hon. What's going on?"
           Bedsheets pulled down to the floor, Maxine lay exposed. The blouse of her nightie had been yanked open. Her "dream" had been a bodice-ripper. Literally. Wordlessly she allowed her husband to ogle her breasts like a schoolboy.
           He asked, "What have you been doing with yourself?"
           HOW DARE HE THINK THAT!
           "I'm OK," she said raggedly. "Please, dear. Leave me. I'll come down in a minute."
           "I thought I smelled gardenias."
           "Go. Please!"
           Hank sauntered out, looking backward.
           Maxine made her toilet. Semen, not ectoplasm, leaked from her secret garden..
           She said to herself, "I'm fixed."
          


    

scoop

        Totem Pole Square offered a "bowling green" and park benches. There was one shade tree, a Douglas fir, stately and proud. Every Sunday Brother Ambrose brought a soapbox and preached his heresy. There was a collection plate, a boombox with New Age cds, and, of course, loaves and fishes.
        On a backstreet off the square stood a gray-shingled office building, occupied by the Totem Pole Ledger. Weekly serving the scattered forest dwellers of Vancouver Island, the newspaper was owned and edited by Artie Hoffman, retired teacher. Folks called him Scoop and he loved it.
        "Hey, Scoop!" The bell wire jangled as Aleister Canterville barged in with burning gossip.
        "Hey, Lester. What's up?"
        "Guess who's fucking!"
        "Me and Margaret Thatcher?"
        "Brother Ambrose and that bare naked Russian hottie. Sonya the Eskimo."
        "Banner news. Thanks. Have a good day."
        "Bye, Scoop."



                                                                                            *


          One of Artie's delights was visiting the constabulary for police blotter news. He enjoyed reading tidbits of news, each with great implication. At first, not knowing any better, he published the little stories in a Walter Winchell styled column titled Around the Square. The column squandered valuable merit. He killed the column and began giving each story its own venue. Maybe three graphs and a headline. Whoah! The Ledger began to sparkle.
          In the Post-Watergate newsday it was expected of an editor to seek out corruption in government, treating elected officials as "the usual suspects." You know, be the newest Woodstein.  
          Artie attended all the hall meetings. Yawn.
          People came forth with zoning propsals and complaints.
          Radcliff over there is a decent guy, owns a dry-cleaning business. He drinks Olympia beer and can toss a decent round of darts. Westport there is a housewife who hosts coffee klatches at the Moosecall.
          He decided one night to give the Ledger a make-over. Subtle and unannounced. He would slip it to his readers on the sly. No claxtons of self-aggrandizement.
         


                                                                                       *


          Artie had to chuckle. Brother Ambrose and Sonya.
          It's time we met Brother Ambrose. Who knows? There might be a story.

apple cider vinegar

        The Totem Pole Lodge leased four studio apartments, each with an outside walk-up to a private landing. These landings served as balconies. Even miniature patios, with railings. Room for one person and a chia pet.
        Brother Ambrose had resided in #203 for twelve months. He suffered a fifteen percent raise in the cost of being there from May through August. Tourist season. A rip-off. This chafed him. It was a take-it-or-leave it deal in an area with an accute housing shortage.
        Arriving home, he found his neighbor's cat Mugsy perched on his railing.
        "Skat, cat. Go home. Or I'll sell you to Wu Tang's restaurant."
        "Mugsy! Come away from that evil man!" Sonya Chekov shouted to  her prodigal charcoal tabby.
        She stood on her balcony next door. Clad in a grass skirt and a bra made of coconut half-shells. Her crowblack Innuit hair was streaked with Day-Glo purple and chopped in the style of a 1920s flapper. She faux-pouted. Then burst out laughing.
        "What's funny?" he quizzed.
        "Dunno. Me, I guess. Whatcha think o' my party costume?"
        "Costume?"


                                                                                       *


          He thought of her as he took a long pee. French roast coffee and bookshop chai.
          Part Sitka Russian, part native Innuit, Sonya Chekov had ebon hair straight as uncooked vermicelli, chopped high off the nape, as if prepared for the guillotine. Her eyes were epicanthric berries. Usually attired in a tank-top so oversized it threatened to slide from her body completely, she displayed creamy skin amazingly tattoo free.
           "Ah," he once smirked. "The booby trap."
           "You noticed. I thought you were a monk."


                                                                                      *


         That evening he secluded himself in the womblike comfort of his apartment. His trusty futon served as bed and sofa. He covered it with a bedspread from Bombay. On a low Japanese tea table a candle guttered with cranberry scents. He started reading "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels.
         A knock on the door.
         It was ten o'clock. Later than he had thought.
         Sonya in her booby trap. Cut-off jeans.
         She handed him a half-filled fifth of single-malt scotch. "This is all I had."
         "Oh, you bet. Come right in."
         He looked beyond her and queried: "No cat?"
         "Mugsy's out dancing for moths."
         He smiled expansively, looking at her pear-shaped boobs. Thinking, Nice little puppies, with their little brown noses.


                                                                              *


          Seated on the futon, he asked her, "So how did the party go?"
          "Fuh-gedda-bowdit."
          A previous tennent had painted a mural opposite the futon. Covering the wall was an enormous sun ball the color of "eat a peach." Sonya warbled, "I love that thing."
          "Yeah. It's great."
          "Try the whiskey."
          He sniffed its bouquet. Sonya informed him: "Listen, clueless. I'm gonna get you drunk and I'm gonna rape you."
          "That calls for some music."
          "Please no Enya."


                                                                                    *


          "Oh, my God," Sonya exclaimed, holding his dingus. "What happened here?"
          His groin was scarlett.
           "A calamity."
           "I should say," she cooed, stroking the foreskin.
           "Long story. A camping story. I poured apple cider vinegar down there. Full strength. Made things worse. MUCH worse."
           Her laughter began pealing the mural from the wall.
           Mingus.